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Tag: stray

That stray dog who was found toting an old black and white photo in his collar has a new home.

But there’s still no answer to who the mystery man in the photo is, or was.

The 2-year-old pit bull mix, nicknamed Soldier, was found in Greenville, S.C., on Jan. 13. He was adopted by a new owner Sunday, Fox News reports.

Back in January, the dog was picked up and brought to Greenville County Animal Care. While checking him for ID, animal control officers found an old black and white photo stuck inside a pouch in his collar.

The photo was of a man, possibly in uniform, leaning against a fence post.

Animal Care staff named the dog Soldier, posted the old photo and photos of the dog on its Facebook page, and hoped to find some answers.

Instead, they mostly got questions – as in “can I adopt him?”

Hundreds of calls were received — none identifying the dog or man, but many from people interested in adopting Soldier.

The best fit was determined to be Julie Hensley, who saw him on Facebook and drove from her home in Virginia, in the snow, to pick him up.

A Russian animal rights activist has been detained in central Moscow after he and two others protested the country’s policy of killing stray dogs in Sochi, according to an Associated Press report

Three activists unfurled a banner near Red Square on Saturday that read “Bloody Olympics.”

The banner depicted a puppy covered in blood.

According to the report, a policeman approached and pulled the banner out of the activists’ hands.

One man was detained while the other two fled.

A year before the Sochi Olympics, municipal authorities announced a contract to “catch and dispose” of strays.

Public pressure led authorities to announce they’d dropped the plan — but they didn’t. Companies have been hired to continue killing the dogs throughout the games, which started Friday and end Feb. 23.

(Photo: A stray dog walks past the Olympic rings during the official flag raising ceremony; by Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press / AP photo)

Animal control officers who picked up a stray last month in Greenville, S.C., face a double mystery as they try to track down the identity of a dog, and of a man pictured in an old black-and-white photo found inside the dog’s collar.

The friendly brown pit bull-type dog was found wandering through a neighborhood on Monday, Jan. 13.

“Knowing that he’s warm and he’s not curled up in a ball somewhere looking for food, I think is awesome,” said Tarah Ross, who along with Mike Berning, took the dog into their home in Anderson Township.

Gabriel got gifts and spent Christmas morning snuggled next to her on the couch, Ross told WKRC in Cincinnati.

“He really, I think, gives us the meaning of Christmas. I mean look at him. He’s got the unconditional love and that’s what it’s all about. So he’s really our gift instead of the other way around,” Ross said.

Cincinnati Pit Crew said Gabriel might end up staying with the couple, if he continues to get along with their other dogs.

He doesn’t have 101 – not yet – but Nelson Vergara, a.k.a. “The Dalmatian Man,” has 42 of them as of the latest count, all living in the back yard of his modest home in Santiago, Chile.

The unemployed 55-year-old man, who says he was inspired by the movie, has a soft spot for dogs, and Dalmatians in particular. So obsessed is he with the breed, he has painted black spots on his white van.

“It all started because of that film,” Vergara is quoted as saying in an Associated Press story that appeared on ElSalvador.com.

Vergara says he wants to raise awareness about the millions of stray dogs in Chile.

He feeds and cares for the Dalmatians and other breeds as well through donations.

“I wanted to help – not just the Dalmatians but all dogs, because in Chile we need a solution to the canine problem. Every day you see news of abandoned dogs roaming, but no one does anything about it. If we had a shelter, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems,” he said.

As you might guess, his neighbors are none too thrilled with his altruism.

The article reports that neighbors constantly complain about the noise and smell coming from his home and he and his dogs risk being evicted.

It was more than 10 years ago that a stray dog showed up in the emergency room of a hospital in Hamblen County, Tennessee.

The sheriff’s office in Morristown took the lab mix in, named him ER, and in 2002 assigned him the rank of captain.

He never sniffed out drugs, or chased criminals, but ER became a goodwill ambassador, roaming the halls of the county justice center.

“He made his rounds to the courthouse and he made his rounds out through the yard here with inmates accompanying him and lot of people don’t understand about this, but ER was not just a dog. He was the Hamblen County Sheriff’s Department mascot,” Sheriff Esco Jarnagin told WBIR.

ER wore a deputy’s badge on his collar and, except for service animals, was the only dog allowed inside the building.

Last week, a decade after he wandered into the emergency room of Morristown-Hamblen Hospital, ER passed away.

A crowd came out to pay their respects to ER at his funeral, and he was buried in front of the justice center.

It sometimes seems a new dog book leaps off the presses everday – some not so good, some far too precious, some (though we like goofy) way too goofy, some noble and some ignoble.

Often, the most noble ones are so preachy, pedantic and overwrought they leave you feeling like you’ve spent six hours locked in a room with an evangelist who’s more concerned with lassoing your mind than opening it.

“Dogs With No Names” is an exception to that — a collection of photos, thoughts and insights gathered by Dr. Judith Samson-French while she was on a mission to sterilize stray and feral dogs on an Indian reservation in Canada.

It has a point, without being preachy; it has heart, without being schmaltzy; it has depth, valuable insights and some awesome photographs; and it looks at the plight some reservation dogs face without being desperate, culturally insensitive or overly judgmental.

Millions of unnamed, unclaimed and often unwanted dogs roam North America’s indian reservations — some feral, some tame, many somewhere in between — doing what they need to do to survive, including repopulating.

Samson-French’s mission was to implant a new type of contraceptive into female dogs on a reservation in Alberta, Canada, but her insights extend far beyond Canada, and far beyond reproduction.

She exposes the adversity, despair and suffering reservation dogs often face, and she looks at ways to compassionately and effectively address the overpopulation problem. She examines the behavior of reservation dogs, and how they’ve evolved to the conditions they live in. And she doesn’t overlook the role humans have played — and could play – in the equation.

The book lives up to its billing as “an intimate look at the relationship between North America’s First Nations communities and dogs: seeing past our prejudices to build bridges and understanding between our often combative cultures.”

Samson-French is a veterinary clinician and surgeon with over 20 years of experience. She owns and operates a veterinary hospital in the Rocky Mountain foothills. A graduate of McGill University (B.Sc.) and the University of Alberta (M.Sc.), she received her doctorate in veterinary medicine from the Ontario Veterinary College.

All of the profits from the sales of Dogs With No Names are donated to the Dogs With No Names project, of which Samson-French is founder.

(Photo: The cover photo of “Dogs with No Names,” courtesy of evocativedogphoto.com)